Browsing Tag: Green

Honey. You’ve met honey. It’s that sticky,
sweet stuff. Basically just slightly liquidy sugar in a
plastic bear bottle, right? Wrong! Honey is a supercharged bacteria-killing
powerhouse. And it’s all down to what those hardworking bees put into it, from immune
proteins to the sugar itself. Since ancient times, honey has been used to
prevent wounds from getting infected. And these days, we use purified and standardized
versions of honey to fight infections in hospitals. Honey has three main tricks for fighting bacteria. The first is all that sugar. Honey is only about 17% water. Most–but not
all–of what remains is sugar. The two main types of sugar in honey are glucose
and fructose. Like all sugars, glucose and fructose are sticky — they attract water. Honey is technically a supersaturated solution,
meaning it contains more sugar than would normally dissolve at that temperature. That’s
why it eventually gets all crystally in the pantry — over time, the sugar comes out of
the solution. Chemically speaking, it’s desperate for
water. Water can travel across cell membranes from
where there’s a higher concentration of water to where there’s a lower concentration.
And there’s a higher concentration of water in a bacterium than in honey. Which means that honey will suck the juices
right out of any bacterium — or mold, or fungus — that tries to set up shop. Plus, there’s isn’t enough water in honey
for any microorganisms to live on. So they die, and the honey doesn’t spoil. The second thing, is that when bees make honey,
they throw in an enzyme called glucose oxidase. And bacteria hate glucose oxidase because
it produces two different compounds. It converts glucose to gluconic acid and hydrogen
peroxide. Gluconic acid is, you guessed it, an acid.
It gives honey a pH value of less than 4. That’s about a thousand times more acidic
than the neutral pH of 7 that most bacteria need to grow. And hydrogen peroxide is very good at killing
cells. It destroys the cell walls of bacteria, which breaks them apart. Glucose oxidase isn’t active in ripe honey–there’s
not enough water for it to work properly. It seems to be there to keep the honey from
spoiling while the bees are drying it out. But if you dilute honey, the glucose oxidase
will switch back on and make gluconic acid again. The final thing bees do to make honey antibacterial?
They put antibiotics in it. Some types of honey contain a protein called
bee defensin-1, which is exactly what it sounds like. Bee defensin-1 defends bees. It’s part of
their immune system and protects them from certain bacteria, including ones that could
cause nasty diseases inside the hive. It’s produced in a gland that bees use to
make honey, so it makes sense that some of it would make it into the finished product.
And while scientists aren’t sure how much of the protein is really in honey, it sort
of makes sense that bees would use it to protect their food. Another antibacterial compound sometimes found
in honey is methylglyoxal. Methylglyoxal is a small organic molecule
that forms in honey from a compound in the nectar of certain flowers. There’s an especially large amount of methylglyoxal
in manuka honey, a honey made from a New Zealand flower. This honey is so good at killing bacteria
that it’s actually used in hospitals. There’s one bacterium that has honey’s
number–but only sort of. It’s the type of bacteria that that causes
botulism. The bacteria start out as spores, which are
very hard to kill. They’re already dried out, so honey’s
water-sucking properties don’t kill them, and because the spores aren’t growing, they
aren’t affected by the acidity or the antibiotic compounds. The really dangerous part of the bacteria
is the botulinum toxin they produce when they grow into mature bacteria. Less than a hundred
nanograms — that’s billionths of a gram — is enough to kill an adult. About 10% of honeys have some botulinum spores
in them. But since the spores in honey aren’t growing and making toxin, they’re harmless
to healthy adults. Our immune systems intercept the spores before they can start growing inside
of us. But the immune systems of infants aren’t
always able to kill those spores before they start growing. So, in rare cases, the bacteria
can germinate and start producing toxin. That’s why it’s not safe to give honey
to infants under one year old, but the rest of us don’t need to worry about it. So the next time you’re looking for something
sweet, go ahead — eat some of bacteria’s worst enemy. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow,
which was brought to you by our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, so much, to all of those
people. If you want to be one of those people you can go to patreon.com/scishow. And if
you just want to keep getting smarter with us, don’t forget to go to youtube.com/scishow
and subscribe!

{♫Intro♫} If you’re coughing, sneezing, or starting
to feel under the weather, you might blame a virus, or possibly a bacterium. Which is not something humans have known to
do for very long. Around 400 B.C.E., doctors might have blamed
an imbalance of the four vital humors for your illness. Around the 1700s, they might have pointed
to an invisible, disease-carrying fog instead. Today, we know pathogens — viruses, bacteria,
and certain other microbes — are responsible for many diseases. But linking specific diseases to the microbes
that cause them has been surprisingly tricky. In 1882, a scientist named Robert Koch demonstrated
that the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes tuberculosis. And in 1890, he also published a framework
for future scientists to make similar discoveries. He created a checklist for researchers to
reference any time they’re trying to link a pathogen to a disease. The steps are as follows. First, researchers had to be able to find
the pathogen in sick organisms, but not healthy ones. Second, it could be grown in pure culture
— which means that a sample of the microbe could be taken from a sick organism, and then
the microbe could grow independently in a 19th century version of the petri dish. Third, if they exposed a healthy organism
to the stuff that they grew in step two, that organism would get sick with the same disease. Finally, though this step is sometimes considered
optional, the same microbe that was isolated in step one must be found again in the organism
made sick in step three. These steps are now known as Koch’s Postulates. The idea is that if the microbe meets all
of the postulates, then you know it’s the cause of the disease. Unfortunately, his postulates had a few problems. Take postulate one. Tuberculosis can actually be found in healthy
individuals — that’s called latent tuberculosis — so it doesn’t meet Koch’s first postulate. This situation just didn’t show up in his
experiments, which were done in guinea pigs. Postulate three isn’t perfect either. Assuming that any healthy organism exposed
to a pathogen will get sick ignores differences in immune systems. A healthy organism might be able to fight
off the infection or might already be immune to the disease. But it was the second postulate that caused
the most confusion. Something grown in “pure culture” has
to be the only living thing in the dish, and many pathogens just can’t grow independently
like that. Viruses, for example, reproduce by hijacking
molecular machinery in the cells of the organism they’re infecting. Meaning you can’t grow them in a dish by
themselves. But bacteria often grow in a dish just fine. Because postulate two required the thing to
grow in culture, researchers at the turn of the twentieth century would almost exclusively
blame bacteria for the diseases they were studying, which resulted in some false accusations. Malaria, which is actually caused by blood-infecting
parasites, was blamed on a bacterium from Italian marshes in the 1880s, which they named
Bacillus malariae. Canine distemper, a sometimes deadly disease
in dogs that causes symptoms like fever and vomiting, was linked to a series of different
bacteria before it was finally proven to be a virus in the 1920s. And the familiar virus influenza, or the flu,
was misidentified as a bacterium in eighteen ninety-two, by a colleague of Koch’s. The bacterium came to be known as Haemophilus
influenzae. To study the flu, researchers needed samples
of spit and snot from people with obvious symptoms. But one thing that made influenza hard to
study was that, even though the flu usually reaches a peak in winter, the only time that
scientists could reliably find large numbers of flu-ridden folks at the same time was during
a pandemic. And those could be decades apart. So the first chance scientists had to check
the results from 1892 was during the next influenza pandemic… in 1918. Researchers were unable to replicate those
initial results. But it wasn’t clear at the time if it was
because of poorly controlled studies in the chaos of one of the worst pandemics in recent
history and the end of World War I, or if they were just… wrong. A vaccine was developed in New York based
on Haemophilus, just in case. There was at least one study around that time
that managed to find evidence of the right answer: influenza is a virus. It took until 1933 and another influenza pandemic
for scientists to prove without a doubt that the flu is caused by a virus, thanks to the
introduction of ferrets as a model organism. Ferrets were the only small mammals they could
find that actually get the flu and show symptoms similar to ours. So it seems like Koch’s Postulates, especially
the second, really hindered research into any disease that didn’t have a bacterium
behind it. Does that mean they’re useless? Not at all. Since the 1880s, scientists have tweaked Koch’s
postulates over time to match modern understandings of pathogens. Today, the focus isn’t just on microbes,
but on their genes. Using genetic sequencing, scientists can gather
information about all of the nucleic acids in a sample, whether DNA or RNA, and then
use a modified version of Koch’s postulates to figure out which genes are most associated
with disease symptoms. For example, in 1996 scientists at Stanford
came up with a new set of postulates with seven gene-centric points. By using gene sequencing, scientists can find
pathogens that haven’t been isolated and identified before. And there’s no need to culture them. Koch’s postulates provided a solid foundation
for researchers to begin linking diseases to their sources. Sure, there were a few mistakes, but they
provided a rigorous, testable basis for understanding disease. Even if we had to come along and make some
changes later. And even if some ferrets had to get the sniffles. Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow,
and thanks to our supporters on Patreon for making what we do possible. If you want to join them and help us, while
also getting some cool benefits, check out patreon.com/scishow. {♫Outro♫}

This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com,
I have another exciting episode for ya and you know every episode I have is basically
my life gardening lifestyle I mean I live a gardening lifestyle, half my day or more
sometimes or actually out in the garden after I’ve finished with doing the things I have
to do and must do in life because this is my joy, my pleasure, I like to be out in the
garden and get some fresh air and also build some muscles by carting some of these soils
around and whatnot. So what I’m doing today actually is enriching my raised beds for the
upcoming seasons here and thought I’d share the process with you. Specifically “Dear
John, do I throw out the soil every season when you’re growing?” No man, don’t throw
out the soil, the soil is the most important thing you got. As you can see behind me,
the soil actually dips down so I filled this up to the top and over the season it just
kind of compresses down and earthworms are eating some of the organic matter and it just
compresses down, so I don’t till it up, I don’t like to till, what I do is just add
stuff to the top layer and kind of mix it in just a little bit and try not to disturb
any of the existing soil in there, to destroy the precious beneficial microbes and fungi
and other alive elements in the soil. So I’m going to be adding new stuff, and another
question I get a lot is “John, what do I add to my soil?”, so whether you’re starting
a new raised bed or filling it up adding to your raised bed you know what I’m going to
show you now is what I use. You may use some or all of them, some of them I am experimenting
with and some are tried and true and definitely would recommend them. I will let you know
which ones they are, one by one. So let’s see, so currently we’ll start off with what
I’ve filled these beds with, some of these beds here are actually derived compost from
Simona compost, it’s primarily the mallard plus compost, it’s mainly made from food scrapes
and yard waste and clippings, everything from everybody in the county. This is our OMRI
certified for use in industrial production agriculture.
In addition I have added it some different
points of biodynamic high test compost, which is Demeter, certified or listed also from
Sonoma compost and that makes up probably of 99% of what’s in here. I’ve also added
things like rock dust, cal powder, and some other things in the past. What we’re going
to do now is re-enrich for the new growing season. While yes, there’s still lots of
nutrition in the soil, I want my plants to have everything it needs, it’s like if you
go to a buffet, a shmorgeshborg, you could just, there’s all kinds of food in front of
you man and you get to choose what you want to eat. I want to give my soil everything
and put everything into my soil so the plants could choose what they want to absorb. Say
you go to a fast food place and they got 3 options you know you got, I think actually
In and Out burger is like this. You got a hamburger, a cheeseburger, and French fries.
I don’t think they sell much else, a coke. You don’t have too many choices, but imagine
you go to the buffet you have all these different things so I like to just flood my soil with
organic nutrition that’s going to encourage the beneficial microbes and bacteria and fungiis
that are in there, because they are the ones that help break down some of the nutrition
so that the plants could absorb it and let the plants choose. So that’s what I’m going
to show you guys today, which ones I use. Let’s start over on this side. What I like
to do is I like to put all of my different soil medians in little buckets and these are
actually about 1 gallon recycled buckets that I pick up for free. This actually, I don’t
know what this had in it has a label there. But different things, I did these from like
a local health food store that they get almond butter and bath salts and some of these, and
they basically would throw these out or recycle them. I like to take them and reuse them.
So I want to encourage you guys to reuse and recycle, it is just smarter and actually these
buckets come in quite handy when I’m enriching my bed because I get to put one item in each
bucket and then I sprinkle it on uniform ally to mix it in and I’ll show you that process.
In these little buckets, we got all sorts
of cool stuff. So right here what I have is the worm casing so worm gold, worm casings
and in my estimation these are some of the best worm casings. I mainly like these because
they are not only worm cassings, they are like 97% worm cassings and just a small percentage
of the rock dust minerals, and also some kelp meal in there as well so definitely really
good quality worm cassings also they are very high in kyantanase content because these worms,
unlike many worm cassings can be fed manures, these are fed vegetative stock so when the
cassings have high kyanase content which breaks down the kyntene and the insect shells like
the avids and the white flies have shells, exoskeletons that are made of kyntene and
when they have the kyantene enzyme it breaks down their shell. So it’s like when you’re
an insect and you’re eating that plant it’s like pouring acid on your skin, it’s going
to melt, and then guess what it’s going to go to somebody else’s garden that didn’t use
the high quality high chitinase cassings, all worm cassings are not created equal.
Now aside from the worm cassings, I’m also adding my favorite thing and if you don’t
use anything else, you want to definately use this one at least minimally, this is the
rock dust.
In these little buckets, we got all sorts of cool stuff. So right here what I have
is the worm casing so worm gold, worm casings and in my estimation these are some of the
best worm casings. I mainly like these because they are not only worm cassings, they are
like 97% worm cassings and just a small percentage of the rock dust minerals, and also some kelp
meal in there as well so definitely really good quality worm cassings also they are very
high in kyantanase content because these worms, unlike many worm cassings can be fed manures,
these are fed vegetative stock so when the cassings have high kyanase content which breaks
down the kyntene and the insect shells like the avids and the wyflies have shells, exoskeletons
that are made of kyntene and when they have the kyantene enzyme it breaks down their shell.
So it’s like when you’re an insect and you’re eating that plant it’s like pouring acid on
your skin, it’s going to melt, and then guess what it’s going to go to somebody else’s garden
that didn’t use the high quality high kyantenase cassings, all worm cassings are not created
equal. Now aside from the worm cassings, I’m also adding my favorite thing and if you
don’t use anything else, you want to definitely use this one at least minimally, this is the
rock dust. This is the really fine powder that’s the azomite rock dust which I like
so much; I also have used other rock dust in the past as well. Now if you can’t find
a horicultural grade rock dust because it can be very hard to find, if you go to any
big box store, or even most local nurseries, you ask them for rock dust and they’ll look
at you like “Huh”? Or they’ll say “Oh you mean ironites?” No, that’s not the same
stuff man, you want a wide spectrum of ground up rock dust basically and most nurseries,
places don’t have it so check my where I have a video where I have lowest prices on dust
(delived?) so you can get it shipped directly to you at the lowest price I found, other
than that you can go to a local rock and stone quarry and mine stuff out the ground. You’re
going to want the rock dust, rock powder, and their finest grade material that’s pretty
much like a dust. This is actually, literally flour like consistency, its fine like a powder.
We need this in you know, a small powder form so that it’s most available for the microbes,
the microbes can’t break down pebbles and things like that. So aside from the azomite
rock dust powder I also have some rock dust powder that was sourced at a local farm, they
have their own quarry here and they grind their own rock dust, and this is a lot finer
texture but there is some fines in there too. Now you might be thinking “John, why do
you have 2 different rock dusts why isn’t one enough well you know every different kind
of rock?” no matter where it’s from is going to have a different make up of minerals.
So this one may have a lot of certain minerals and this one may have other minerals so I
want to put all the different kinds of rock dust that I could get as possible so that
my plants have all of the different minerals and once again they’re in a schmorgeshborg
and they get to go to town and eat whatever they want, get nice and fat because nice and
fat plants equals nice and fat yields and more food for me to eat.
So aside from the rock dust, I got the next
one here which is also another good source of trace minerals because this is actually
from the ocean. You can also use some things like ocean solution or C90 for your minerals
which I feed in later in foliar feed; these ones actually go in the soil. This one’s
actually kelp meal, so actually if you go to the health food store you can buy kelp
meal and sprinkle that on your food and I recommend that as an excellent alternative
to salt, it’s much lower in sodium, but also has a lot of the other trace minerals in it,
so it’s good for us and it’s also good for it to put in our garden and soak them in our
soil with. Next we have these 3 items right here, and these are the John and Bob’s products.
So I think we got the Soil Optimizer here, and basically these some of these products
are food for the microbes, some of these are actually mild fertilizers and actually the
next one is the trace minerals and the microbes so let’s get into that one next. The John
and Bob’s product that I like the most is actually called Minerals and Microbes, it’s
once again rock dust, trace minerals, and the beneficial microbes that are going to
help break down and allow your plant to absorb them more effectively. This one is actually
called the Nourish Biosal and so on the John and Bob products I’m currently experimenting,
this is my first growing season using them. I’ve read up a lot and I’ve been testing them
in small amounts and I definitely agree with whole principles of the John and Bob’s and
so far, I’m having good results. It’s totally inconclusive at this point because I’m not
sure, haven’t really used it a full growing season. The last bucket of stuff I got is
this stuff right here, it’s the Sonoma Compost Biochar, and Biochar is 100% carbon. If
you’ve done your research, there is this soil called Terrapreta soil, a really dark rich
soil and they used to add Biochar to it. So now, I’m starting to add the 100% carbon
to my soil. That being said you want to do Biochar in moderation, you don’t want to
put too much Biochare because Biochar charcoal, which is what this is used in air cleaners
all the time because charcoal will absorb odors and so also it will absorb the nutrition
in the soil, but it’s good to have there in any case in my opinion. So I’m gonna add
just a little bit of Biochar to this whole raised bed to inoculate my soil with some
Biochar to put some carbon back in my soil in a big way. These items I’ve put in small
amounts you know, 1 gallon buckets. And there’s no real rhyme or method to how much
I’ve put in I just go okay, let’s use a little bit of this, a little bit of that and just
like make an elixir in like the witch’s brew you know. Some of the things I like to use
more of like I like to do a lot of rock dust and especially depending on how much of that
I have in inventory right now and how much I don’t. I don’t have a whole lot of kelp
meal and it tends to be very expensive, whereas, I have a lot more rock dust so I’ll put a
lot of rock dust and a little bit of kelp meal. I always recommend if you don’t know
what you’re doing (this is very important), read the label, read the directions. I’m
not good for reading directions but I could have the gardener intuition and could like
know what I should be using, and I do kind of look at the labels to get some kind of
general guideline before I just start throwing stuff in because if you throw too much in,
you know in general, more may not be always better depending on what you’re going to put
in. You know I’ve thrown in 50% rock dust before and thrown in a large high percentage
of worm cassings with no problems. But I don’t necessarily recommend you do that, you
want to add these things supplementaly into your garden bed. So actually, these are
my supplements and let’s get into the main components of my soil that I’ll be adding
in for this upcoming season. First, we have this one right here; this is Biodynamic Demeter
listed compost. So this is actually from Sonoma compost, this is actually called the
High Test Biodynamic compost. In Biodynamic compost, they put in some like tinctures or
whatever like do all this kind of stuff and it’s actually composted longer than their
standard OMRI listed organic high test compost. So I like to use this stuff sparingly, I mainly
like to use the Mallard Plus but optimally I like to mix the Mallard plus with this and
you know one to one and that would make a awesome blend today because I’m just enriching
my beds. I’m using this guy, and this is basically bacteria based compost, this is
made at high temperatures and has a lot of bacterial matter. Now to be really good
in your garden besides the bacterial matter, you need the fungal matter man. So that’s
what we’ve got next right here, we’ve got some fungal dominated compost man and this
is the bomb stuff right here. This in my opinion is what most people are missing in
their garden, and this is the good stuff the good shit man. Mmm nice smell. And this
is the Boogie Hummus here and basically this is a wood chipped based hummus, so what they
did was, as I said the regular compost is with the bacterial process with high heat
and it breaks down over time. How this works is this is fungal dominated compost, so they
take literally wood chips and they sit it in a pile for months and months and years
and years and it basically just composts down and breaks down over time. So this is a
low heat process so the low heat process, so the low heat process creates different
micro-organisms and encourages different micro-organisms in this mixture instead of the high heat mixture.
So I’m going to add both these together so you know optimal growing results so we’ve
got the fungal dominated and the bacterial based dominated compost and once again this
is the Boogie Hummus. I haven’t seen the tested results from the Boogie Hummus yet
but I’m highly confident it is quite active in all the different microbes. Besides it
just being the soil and it just plays for the plant to put its roots, and the plants
roots grow between the soil not through the soil, the airspace in the soil, it’s also
going to have a lot of the nutrition, bacterial, and fungal microbes that make the whole system
work, that make the plants roots work. The plants have been on earth for millions of
years and they’ve learned to work in a system of this whole soil microbiology. So besides
the soils I’ve got this last one here. This is also very important, I have been primarily
growing in the compost and I do notice that in the summertime they do dry out a little
bit so what I recommend for people and new gardeners is Mel’s mix, Mel’s Bartholomew
who got the square foot garden method going. He basically recommends 1/3 of compost, 1/3
of vermiculite, and 1/3 of coconut core, or Pete moss. What we’re going to add in here
is a bag of stuff I got, this is actually coconut core, and some pearlite which is similar
but not exactly the same thing as the vermiculite. Also I actually used enriched with the rock
dust here. So we’re just going to go ahead and add this one bag in and adding just some
amounts of coconut core, I could add a lot more but I don’t want to displace too much
of the other stuff I’m adding to my beds. It’s going to help the water retention so
that my garden doesn’t dry out as much in this upcoming summer season. I know what
you might be thinking; you’re thinking “John, should I add all of those to my garden?” Well,
you know what; let me tell you the beneficial ones. The beneficial ones are #1 a compost;
you want to try to get a good quality bacterial based compost (hopefully locally) and also
fungal dominated compost. Those are the most important. Next in my opinion, the
most important, the rock dust of the ezomite you want trace minerals in there. If you
want to stop there that’s great, if you want to keep going you probably want to add the
coconut core or the Pete moss, and then you want to add the vermiculite. Then that’s
probably like all you need is as the base line. If you want to take it to the next
level then add the worm cassings, then I’d probably add the kelp meal. Each of these
different nutrients you’re adding in I mean, literally what I’m going to be doing next
is mixing these into my soil and it’s almost like baking a cake right, if you leave that
one ingredient in a cake out it could mess up the whole recipe. This is what I’ve found
what really works and it’s only going to help the beneficial microbes. Several of the
products are going to populate the microbial, and fungal and bacterial action in the soil
even more including these two composts and the microbes and minerals product and that’s
what you really want to do. I always encourage you guys to do the best you can but at minimum
do the compost, the rock dust, and the work cassings basically to sum it up. The other
ones if you’ve got extra money to spend you know buy it and try it and see my videos when
I actually go over the results on some of the John and Bob’s products. Now we’re going
to mend my raised bed, as you can see I’ve taken out the irrigation system and kind of
draped it over the side temporarily so I can get in here and work this cause what I like
to do is just layer on all of my nutrients and all of the different amendments that are
going to add and kind of mix in with my hands, I like using my hands in the soil I don’t
like using spades or shovels I like to just kind of get my hands dirty (well I’ve got
gloves on because I’m a wuss like that). But anyways we’re just going to mix it all
up and layer it on and just kind of mix it and fluff it all in and at the end we’re going
to make sure it’s level with the top so that it has a nice finished look in my garden.
You know for me, if you have a raised bed garden in my opinion for the most part you
should always fill it up to the top because then if you fill it up to the top there is
most soil and most different nutrients in the soil so your plants could have that schmorgeshborg
that we want them to have. So first what we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead
and add the worm cassings and what I like to do is I like to just take a bucket, and
this bucket makes it very convenient to just shake a little bit of it out over the whole
bed so we get this stuff evenly distributed. Now we’re going to add the kelp meal and same
thing, this bucket here is going to serve as the L part of the bed so we’re going to
put about half of this stuff in there (oh, a little bit too much). I just like to just
kind of go along and evenly distribute it in the bed. Next we’ve got the Biochare,
and some of these materials you know do tend to clump up so I like to just get my hands
in the material with the gloves on and actually just break it up into nice, fine particles
before you know spreading it in. Be aware that the carbon or the biochar will definitely
stain your hands black so you might want to wear some gloves for that so we’re just going
to break that up a little bit and spread this out a little bit in my garden. Next we’ve
got the rock dust, this is a very fine powder so you may want to use, and actually I encourage
you guys to use a dust mask so that you don’t breathe this fine particulate in or minimally
hold your breath or put a handkerchief over your nose and mouth so that you don’t breathe
while doing this. I’m going to choose to hold my breath today. Can’t breathe uhh,
alright after the dust cleared, I can inhale now whoo. Next, we’re going to use a second
rock dust (not totally dust but a little bit dusty), going to spread this guy out. Next,
we’ve got the John and Bob’s products; I believe it’s the Nourish Biosoil. We’re just going
to go ahead and shake this stuff out, don’t want to shake too much out in here, you need
very little of these products here.
Next we’ve got the John and Bob’s Soil Optimizer, once again we’re just going to shake this
stuff out just a little bit everywhere (just like baking a cake). Next we’ve got the
microbes and minerals maximized by John and Bob’s and this actually tends to clump up
a lot, so before we actually dump it in there, I’m just kind of squeezing this up in my hands.
This is one of the funest things I like to do while I have gloves on anyways is just
squeeze these up and just feel the soil man. Squeeze it up in a nice fine particulate so
that it’s evenly distributed in your soil instead of big large clods. Did you ever
have like dirt clod fights when you were a kid? We used to have dirt clod fights and
chuck them at other kids, that was not a nice thing to do but probably everybody does that
when you’re a kid. We’ve got this in a fine texture here, we’re just going to once again
we’re just going to take it and just kind of sprinkle it daintily throughout my raised
bed. So those are all the ingredients that I’ll be adding. You know the main single
ingredient that I’ll be adding is I’m going to add the 3 bagged products. Now you know
once again I’m going to say this is what I’m using at this time based on what I have quote
unquote what I have in stock or what I have extra bags of. You know if I only had compost
I would use the compost and the rock dust without anything else. That being said these
are maybe things beneficial for you to use. I mean once again my goal is not to be gardening
on the frugal I mean that’s one of my goals but it’s not one of my highest goals. My
highest goal in why I’m growing food is to make nutrient dense food and so I want to
have the highest quality food because in my opinion the food you eat becomes you, and
when you eat the highest quality food, you’re going to be the highest quality person you
could be. So I want to have the highest quality health and highest quality everything
and I could only do that by growing my own food, adding all these minerals and different
things in my soil because frankly most conventional agriculture even organic agriculture is not
taking it to the level that I am. #1 It maybe unsustainable, adding some of these
things in large quantities to fields. Some of these things can be very expensive to add
so I mean I think every farmer should add minimally like sea water to their drip line
or when they’re watering, and I definitely think that they should add the rock dust that
alone, should make an amazing difference, plus you could use some of the other things
like the fungal dominated compost and compostees that I’m getting ready to add later in the
season. So next let’s go ahead and add those bagged products. Now we’re going to
add the coconut corn pearlite. Next we’ve got the big boys, here’s the high test biodynamic
compost. Now biodynamic compost is actually fairly rare. I’m lucky that I have a local
source, I’m really glad for that, and this gets added into much higher quantities.
It’s basically going to get added all the way to top off this whole bed actually.
And now we’ve got the Boogie Hummus, now I want to take a second to talk more about the
Boogie Hummus you know, there’s an episode I did while back at my friends place and actually
the title of the video is called Super Size Your Vegetables With Wood Chips and Rock Dust.
My friends in Oregon, all they’re growing in their compost is wood chips that they grow
on their own property. You know I don’t have a large property where I can actually
sit and compost wood chips for like 3 years to make this stuff, so I’m getting it from
the Boogie Brew Company the Boogie Hummus. This is some really good stuff, so we’re going
to go ahead and add that stuff in there and hopefully this will supersize my vegetables
along with those trace minerals to get me optimal growth…and maybe even optimal girth.
Okay so the main deal is once you’ve got all of this added you’re probably going to have
to add more later but just to show you guys, I got to roll up my sleeves and take my gloves
and just get these big particles and just break them up because I don’t want big chunks
in the soil. So I’ll be here with my hand just kind of going through and breaking up
any large chunks of stuff. What I’m doing is just basically just waxing on and waxing
off, much like that movie, wax on wax off. I’m just going along the surface not to disturb
the underneath soil layers and I’ve never really seen anybody do this so you don’t have
to do it like this but this is just how I like to do it you know this is my garden Zen
meditation you know, wax on wax off….I like waxing off more than I like waxing on. We’re
just going to go ahead and mix all of these different amendments all together so we have
a nice evenly distributed mixture, and you can see that because of all the different
rock dust patterns have a different color and you can see the pearlite get mixed in,
so definitely really cool. As you guys can see I’ve got the soil pretty much filled up
and it’s a little bit high and saying real quick is just the way I do it doesn’t mean
you have to do it. Another alternate way to do this is to have a nice large wheelbarrow
and mix all of your different soils all up in there and then fill that on top. I kind
of like to get my hands in there in the soil and mix it all up even if I’m mixing something
in the wheelbarrow I prefer to mix it up with my hands instead of using a shovel I mean
I just like digging in the dirt much like I’m a kid again. The final step you see
is like all uneven, I really like to have that nice finished look especially in my front
yard garden even in my backyard garden or wherever I garden I just like it to look nice
and neat and tidy like Europeans. So what I’m going to do is what I call Screech., Screech
is not the dude that was in Saved by the Bell sitcom thing, it’s what I do to my raised
bed after its full I take like a 2 x 3 and what we’re going to do is just going to take
this down and I like to kind of run it all the way across the bed although I have a trelless
in there. I just take it and squeegee it across the top so that I could make sure the
top is completely level and all the soil is level, it gives you that nice and finished
look. I’m going to go ahead and Screech the top of my bed to make the soil level and
I’ll be back at ya in a minute. So now you guys could see that I’ve got this all Screeched
out and I’ve got my irrigation drip system back on top. One of the things I actually
like is the sub soil irrigation system I’m going to hopefully test real soon. With
that system you got to just move all that irrigation stuff and you have the flexibility
of being able to freely plant wherever you really want with the wicking action that it
has. I know you guys might be thinking, you country gardeners “John why the hell are
you screeching the bed and making it look all pretty?” This is actually at the sidewalk
in the front of my house, I mean I want this to look nice and pretty and neat for me and
for people that come over and look at it, the people driving by. You know if I did
live in the country and had 40 acres and had no neighbors and I didn’t really care, I’d
probably just do a close enough job and just leave it but you know it’s in my front yard
and I’m going to be looking at it a lot and just kind of like OCD like that. I guess
the last step I like to do is just take my hose and I like to spray this down evenly
with water and prep this bed and get it ready for the new plants that are going in. The
soil is actually dry, and I find if the soil has been dry for a long time the water tends
to run off instead of soaking in so I want to get the water soaking in the soil so when
I do plant the (starts?) it doesn’t run off and soaks in much better. Once the soil
does get wet it tends to hold the water better than when it’s fully dried and kind of just
runs off. Alright, so we’ve wetted it down enough and I mean that’s pretty much it.
Now we’re ready to plant out for the new season. So for those guys that were wondering that’s
how I enrich my bed, I use a lot of different things. Now, you don’t necessary need to
use all of these things for great gardening results you know if you just get some bed
compost and start doing it you’re going to be great but if you want to improve, I always
live my life by a principle called CANI (C-A-N-I) It stands for Constant And Never ending Improvement.
I want to always improve what I’m doing and get that much better, if it means I got to
spend a little bit of extra money and some things to add to my soil to make that much
better so I can have more nutritious produce, I’m going to definitely do it. That being
said you know you need to figure out where you’re at. At the bare minimum I’d recommend
compost and the rock dust and then you know from there you could add in the vermiculite,
the coconut core or Pete moss and then the worm cassings and you might feel comfortable
stopping there or adding different varieties of rock dust and getting more crazy like I
do. Hope this sheds a little bit of light on what I do to enrich my raised beds after
each growing season and some of the things I use. Of course it varies depending on
you know what I have in stock you know I have these other things like zyolites and all kinds
of different things in the past but these are some of the basic things that I generally
always use. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode and it was quite enriching to
you like it was enriching to my raised bed. Once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com;
we’ll see you next time and remember….keep on growing!

These might be the most
groundbreaking headphones of all time. But not for the reasons you might expect. We’re not talking about audio capabilities or Bluetooth functionality, but rather what they’re made of. Fungus, bacteria, and yeast. It turns out, mushrooms and a whole
lot of other microbes can produce materials that
rival plastics and even leather. And there is a team of scientists and designers in Finland doing just that. So, how did they take such unusual materials and turn them into something
that could seriously shake up the world of product design? Nina Pulkkis: The Korvaa project started actually with frustration. Narrator: That’s Nina Pulkkis. She’s the one who started Korvaa, this whole headphone project. Pulkkis: I was filming for a documentary about microbes and synthetic biology. But I was really frustrated because I didn’t have very good samples of what you can actually do with microbes. Narrator: So she set out on a mission to see what could be made with them. She gathered a team of scientists, researchers, and designers to make it happen. Pulkkis: So, first of
all, we started to think, what kind of a product should we make. Géza Szilvay: There was
an idea about making a pair of headphones. Narrator: Headphones worked
for a couple of reasons. First, they are an instantly
recognizable product. Everyone has them. Second, they require lots of leathers and different kinds of plastics, and those aren’t always
sustainable materials. That’s because oil and natural gas are two of the main raw materials
used to make plastics. And in 2017, 368 million headphones
were sold worldwide, a number that’s expected to keep growing. That means a ton of plastic, leather, and synthetic leathers,
materials that rely heavily on nonrenewable,
nonbiodegradable resources. Korvaa’s process is a little different. To start out, the headband
is made of bioplastic. To make that bioplastic, the team uses plain old baker’s yeast. Through chemical processes,
they turn that yeast into a bioplastic substance. That substance gets
3D-printed and hardened. Next, the cushioned ear cups. These are made from fungal proteins and other plant-based
materials grown in the lab. Those materials get injected
right into this mold. And when they’re dry, they
look and feel just like foam. Szilvay: Then the ear-cup covers are made from fungal, leatherlike material. It’s made of mycelium. One could think of it as
root structure of mushrooms. Merja Penttilä: Fungi grow in so-called hyphal filamentous forms, so they form long, long stretches. So the material, in a way, grows itself. Narrator: And those
long stretches of roots will take the shape of
whatever you encourage them to. The result? Something similar to leather. To make the inner mesh part, the team created synthetic spider silk. Spider silk is superstrong,
lightweight, and elastic. But spiders can’t spin enough of it. So they make silk in the lab, without harming any
eight-legged creatures. By electro-spinning that silky
material onto a flat surface, they create a mesh material. Then, all those parts get pieced together to form a one-of-a-kind headset. Manuel Arias Barrantes: I think people have this perception that fungi is something, like, dangerous or, like, gross, because it grows on food also, that it’s rotten. But I think this is
slowly changing as more designers and companies are developing materials from natural sources. Saku Sysiö: For a lot of the materials, we didn’t know how to use them and how to make them work in this project. So that made it quite
challenging and interesting. Pulkkis: So it’s really exciting to see how this kind of small project grew into something really much, much bigger just by teaming up all
kinds of different people with different competencies and completely different backgrounds. Narrator: That team plans to commercialize these unique materials so they can be used in all sorts of products. Would you wear these fungus headphones?

Here at SciShow, we talk a lot about the fascinating,
complicated, and often very weird stories of discovery and collaboration that led to
the science we know today. But one of the strangest is something we haven’t
covered in much detail before, and it’s a biggie: the decades it took to figure out
exactly what HIV and AIDS were, and how to prevent and treat them. Since the start of the AIDS crisis, some 70
million people have been infected with HIV, and 35 million of those people have died. Both those numbers are staggering in their
own way, and together, they tell the story of a disease that has led to an incredible
amount of loss, but also one that — if you’re lucky enough to have access to the right medicines
— is no longer a death sentence. So, in honor of World AIDS Day on December
1, we want to tell you that story. There’s a lot to cover, so we’ll do it
in two parts. This episode, we’ll go over how we figured
out what HIV is, when the infection morphs into AIDS, and where we think the virus came
from. Next time, we’ll look back to the earliest
treatments, the arrival of antiretroviral drugs, which were complete game-changers,
and go over the creative ways scientists are now thinking about prevention and possibly
even a cure. But first, the basics. HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is a
retrovirus that infects immune cells, most notably what are known as CD4 T cells. The “retrovirus” part just means that
the virus uses RNA — DNA’s more wily, less stable cousin — as its genetic material,
and that once HIV infects a cell, it makes a DNA version of its genome with a special
enzyme, then inserts that DNA into the host genome. If that sounds sneaky — well, it is. And it’s part of why HIV has been so difficult
to treat, which we’ll talk about more next time. Now, those CD4 T cells that HIV infects and
ultimately kills are a kind of white blood cell known as ‘helper’ T cells. When they recognize a threat, they pump out
proteins that help coordinate a bunch of different immune responses. You definitely want them around. HIV is spread by bodily fluids, including
blood, semen, vaginal fluid, and breast milk. That’s why HIV can be transmitted through
sex, dirty needles, breastfeeding, and any other swapping of fluids you might do — with
a major exception: saliva isn’t one of those fluids. Saliva is full of other stuff that prevents
HIV from being infectious, like antibodies and a bunch of antimicrobial proteins. So unless there’s a lot of blood in your
saliva for some reason, it can’t transmit HIV. When someone is first infected, they might
feel like they have a bout of the flu, with a fever, headache, rash, sore throat, and
muscle and joint pain. That’s because the virus is infecting lots
of cells and the immune system is trying to fight it off. But within a few weeks those symptoms pass
because by then the person has specific antibodies that can keep the virus from running totally
rampant. After that, they usually feel fine for a long
time — in many cases, a really long time, like several decades. Until, one day, they don’t, because the
virus has finally killed off too many T cells, leaving the body unable to properly defend
itself against pathogens — anything that might be dangerous or infectious. That’s when someone is said to have AIDS,
or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Usually AIDS is diagnosed once the person’s
T cell count falls below 200 cells per microliter of blood, which is well below the normal 500-1500,
or if they develop what’s called an opportunistic infection. These are infections that anyone with a reasonably
strong immune system would be able to fight off, easy-peasy. But because HIV has obliterated most of their
T cells, AIDS patients get sick. And, they can die. Most of the time it’s an opportunistic infection
that killed them. So, some of that was probably familiar to
you, but pretend for a moment that you’ve never heard of HIV or anything else I just
mentioned. Because back in the ‘80s, we didn’t know
these basic facts. All doctors knew was that suddenly, healthy
young gay men were developing extremely rare infections and cancers — and, it was killing
them. One of the first people to notice the pattern
was an immunologist at UCLA. Between the fall of 1980 and the following
spring, he saw a string of five patients, all gay men in their 20s or 30s, with an unusual
kind of pneumonia. There was a fungus growing inside their lungs. Normally, the fungus was totally harmless
and would never infect the lungs, but in these men it had, and it was making it hard for
them to breathe. The patients also had oral thrush — basically
yeast infections in their mouths — and few CD4 T cells. By June, when the immunologist wrote up the
results for the CDC’s weekly Mortality and Morbidity report, two patients had died. A month later, a dermatologist in New York
chimed in with a similarly disturbing report, this time with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a rare
cancer where patients develop blotchy purple lesions on their skin. In two and a half years, 26 young gay men
in New York and LA had been diagnosed with Kaposi’s. Some also had the weird fungal pneumonia,
and 8 had died. It’s hard to imagine now, but at this point,
scientists had no idea what was making people sick. They didn’t know if it was some sort of
toxin or a pathogen. And if it was an infection of some kind, they
didn’t know how it was spreading. That meant they couldn’t warn people about
how to protect themselves. The association with gay men, though, was
certainly striking, and early on, many called the mystery disease GRID, for gay-related
immune deficiency. Lots of people would talk about it as the
“gay cancer” or “gay plague.” But the disease wasn’t limited to gay men. It was turning up in hemophiliacs — people
whose blood doesn’t clot properly and are treated with clotting factors taken from other
people’s blood. Doctors were also seeing cases in IV drug
users, women, infants, and heterosexual men. In particular, 20 recent immigrants from Haiti
had gotten sick, and none said they were gay. Those clues were important, because they told
scientists the disease — which had finally been given the name AIDS — was probably
infectious, and probably transmitted by blood. There were other diseases that spread in similar
ways, like hepatitis B. So in March of 1983, the CDC issued a warning
that doctors needed to be careful about blood transfusions, and that the disease seemed
to spread through both gay and straight sex. Debates about the specifics, including whether
it could spread through saliva, would happen later. But what was the infectious agent? The race was on for scientists to figure out
what was causing the disease. French molecular biologist Luc Montagnier
suspected a virus because at the time, the blood products hemophiliacs used were filtered
for things like bacteria and fungi. But viruses were too small to catch. So along with his colleague Françoise Barré-Sinoussi,
he searched cells taken from AIDS patients and found a retrovirus. Around the same time, Robert Gallo at the
NIH in the US also identified a retrovirus in samples from AIDS patients. Both groups published their work in May 1983,
and shortly afterward another team found yet another retrovirus. All the viruses had been given different names,
and at first, it’s wasn’t totally obvious that they were the same thing. But they were, and in 1986, the cause of AIDS
had been given an official name: HIV. So, HIV was the problem, but where had it
come from, and why had the epidemic struck now, in the decade of big hair and Michael
Jackson? While some researchers were scrambling to
identify whatever it was that made AIDS infectious, others noticed that macaque monkeys also seemed
to suffer from an AIDS-like disease. One group decided to take some blood samples
from these sick monkeys, and in 1985 they found a virus that was similar to HIV. It was eventually called SIV, for simian immunodeficiency
virus. Researchers started to think that HIV might
have come from our primate relatives, jumping the species barrier. After a lot of work, they figured out that
the virus behind the epidemic was very similar to the chimpanzee version of SIV, and they
were the ones who had passed it to us. But how exactly? There’s no real way to put this delicately,
but most scientists agree that the reason why SIV made the leap into humans — what’s
called a spillover — is because we had a taste for bushmeat, or wild game. In this case, monkeys and chimps. This is known as the cut-hunter hypothesis. In the course of butchering a chimpanzee,
some SIV-infected chimp blood enters a small cut on the hunter’s hand. Or, a bit of blood splatters in their mouth. The virus is close enough to human biology
to infect the hunter, and over time, if the hunter passes the virus along to enough people,
it evolves into the HIV we know today. Spillovers like these happened many times
— we can tell because the virus mutates quickly, and by looking at genetic differences,
we can identify multiple lineages of the virus, each one corresponding to a spillover. We’ve traced the current epidemic to just
one of these, called ‘M’ for main. By analyzing chimpanzee pee and poop, researchers
think the chimps who passed that version of the virus to us lived in southwestern Cameroon,
in the forests near the Congo. And based on the oldest blood samples we can
find that we now know have HIV in them, which are from 1959 and 1960, scientists estimate
that HIV-1 first infected humans around 1908. If that seems like a long time ago, well,
it takes a while for a virus to take off. By the 1920s, it’s thought that the virus
traveled downriver — in a person, of course — to the burgeoning city of Kinshasa, then
known as the Belgian colonial city of Leopoldville. There weren’t many women around other than
prostitutes, so experts think HIV spread that way, and possibly through injectable drugs
the colonists used to treat some tropical and venereal diseases. This was before disposable syringes, and nurses
were trying to treat lots of people with just a few of them, so the syringes may have only
been rinsed with alcohol before being used on the next patient. So the very methods meant to stop the spread
of disease may have actually been
encouraging it. With time, infected people in Kinshasa left
to go to other places, and they did the unavoidable: they brought the virus with them. Because the virus mutates so quickly, we can
group the viruses into 9 different subtypes and get a sense of how HIV traveled around
the world from Central Africa. Several subtypes spread to other parts of
Africa. Subtype C went south and then landed in India. Subtype B went to Haiti — and then, through
several quirks of history, came to the US. First, in 1960, when the Belgians left the
Congo, French-speaking Haitians started to arrive in the Congo to work as doctors, lawyers,
and other professionals. But with the creation of Zaire in 1965, the
immigrants felt unwelcome, so they went back to Haiti, bringing HIV with them. There, HIV expanded especially quickly, possibly
because of a plasmapheresis center where people could get paid to donate their blood plasma. The center used a machine that mixed the blood
of different donors, allowing viruses to transfer. By 1982, nearly 8 percent of a group of young
mothers in a Port-au-Prince slum were HIV-positive — an astoundingly high number. HIV is thought to have entered the US around
1969, with just one infected person or unit of plasma from Haiti. It took about a decade for anyone to notice,
but by then it was too late. The epidemic had begun, and HIV was not only
in the Americas, but Europe and Asia, too. And now that it was here, we needed to figure
out how to fight it. But we’ll get to that in the next episode
of this mini-series. In the meantime, thanks for watching this
episode of SciShow, and if you want to learn more about HIV and all kinds of other science,
you can go to youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.

Hi I’m Tricia, an organic gardener. I grow
organically for a healthy and safe food supply, for a clean and sustainable environment, for an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Gophers can be a serious and frustrating
pest and the first step is monitoring. To make sure that you actually do have
gophers and not moles, voles or ground squirrels. If you have gophers you’ll see a
distinctive crescent or horseshoe shaped mound with a plugged tunnel. In rockier clay soil you may not see a
distinctive mound but you will see the hole that’s been filled back in. Once youve verified that you do have gophers you can control with an integrated pest
management system. IPM starts with prevention keep the borders of your garden weed
free, gophers are a lot less likely to travel in to your garden if there’s no food
on the way. The next step is avoidance if you already have gophers in your yard the way you can get them to not
eat your plants it’s too lay down gopher wire at the
bottom of your beds or plant your plants within gopher baskets. For trees make sure that you only use the fifteen
gallon tree basket Unlike the gopher wire or the
other baskets, this basket is designed to break down and degrade after just a couple years so that it
doesn’t girdle the tree roots. Along with avoidance you want to suppress
the population of gophers and the easiest and most reliable way to do that
is with trapping. Trapping is most effective when you can
find the main burrow so get a stick or use a tool like this. Starting at the freshest mound you wanna probe eight to twelve inches
from the side of the mound where the plug is the burrow will be located six to twelve
inches deep you’ll notice a sudden drop about two inches when
you hit the burrow. So first you wanna open up the plug and I
like doing that with this Hori Hori weeder and this is where you are going to put the trap. This cinch trap is great for the
opening insert the trap six to eight inches into the tunnel you can either plug the tunnel again or
leave it open. Where you’re located the main borrow
open a hole with the Hori Hori. Where going to set two traps down in that burrow. I like these Victor easy set traps. First I’m going to tie a string around the traps so that i can pull it out and check it. The additional traps should be set facing opposite directions in the main burrow. Check your traps in the morning and evening if the traps have not been visited within
forty-eight hours move the traps. Make sure and attach these type of traps to a stake that way you can locate them and remove them easily. In addition to trapping you can’t put up
barn owl nesting boxes. Barn Owls can help reduce the population
over time but they’re not a quick fix and will not a eradicate gophers from
any one area. If you have a large area and are willing to
take the time, training a terrier to hunt gophers is an effective control. If your gopher
problem persists IPM does take it to the next level but
these control measures are usually not organic so you have to make the decision
how far you want to go to control the gophers. This gopher tool can be used to apply natural poisons deep inside the burrows. Never apply natural or any other
poisons to the surface of the soil even the teeny tiniest little grain can
kill a song bird. Be aware that there’s a good chance of
secondary poisoning of an animal that would eat a poisoned gopher such as pets or birds of prey. You can also fumigate with these gopher gases
but university research shows that they’re not quite as effective because the gophers will close up
their tunnel to avoid the gas but there’s no secondary poisoning worries
there. Well i’ve told you what you can do to control your gophers. and now I want to tell you what doesn’t work according to UC davis ineffective controls include: chewing gum, laxatives, repellents of all kinds, plants
like “gopher purge” and scare devices. Once you’ve solved your gopher problems
cleanup all the mounds and come back and monitor to make sure that they haven’t
returned. So get your gophers and grow organic for life!

SciShow is supported by Brilliant.org. [♪ Intro ] Some animals are way smarter
than we give them credit for. Crows can invent tools, some spiders customize
hunting techniques, animals have even been observed medicating themselves to treat illnesses. But animal behavior isn’t always what it
seems, and this self-medication is a great example of that. There’s actually a whole field about this
subject, called zoopharmocognosy, and it tends to pop up on the internet
from time to time. For example, you might have read how elephants
eat a certain tree to induce labor. Or that some primates eat specific plants
to get rid of parasites. But as cool as that sounds, and it sounds
pretty cool, some of those stories are a bit problematic,
at least scientifically. In some cases, the research isn’t nearly as
solidified as a lot of articles will make you believe. So here are six examples of zoopharmacognosy
and what the research really says. Although they are not the most famous examples,
the best-studied cases of zoopharmacognosy are actually in insects, like tiger moth caterpillars. These insects eat multiple species of plant,
but some of them are a bit unusual, because they contain harmful chemicals called pyrrolizidine alkaloids, or PAs. These chemicals reduce the caterpillars’ ability to grow, but there’s also a pretty big benefit to eating them: PAs protect the
caterpillars against parasitoids. And a small caterpillar is better than a dead
caterpillar any day. These caterpillars are parasitized by several
species of insect, including some flies that can make their lives
pretty horrible. The flies lay their eggs on the caterpillars,
and when they hatch, the young maggots burrow into the caterpillars and begin eating them alive. But if a caterpillar’s tissues are laced
with PAs, it has a chance to survive this horror, because the alkaloids are even more
toxic to the maggots than they are to the caterpillars. In a paper published in PLOS One in 2009,
researchers validated that idea in the lab, and they even found that parasitized insects
ate more alkaloid-laced food than their unaffected counterparts. Kind of like they were taking more medicine. It’s unclear exactly how much they know
why they’re doing what they’re doing, and the results were slightly different depending
on how many fly eggs a caterpillar had on it. But one way or another, it shows that they’ve
found a treatment to kill the flies that ail them. It’s not just caterpillars that do this,
either. Another insect that uses medicine to combat
body-snatching parasites is our old friend the fruit fly. If you’ve ever forgotten a peach in the
back of your pantry, you probably know that these flies are attracted to rotting fruit. They lay their eggs on it so that, when they
hatch, the little maggots have a sweet meal right in front of them. But sometimes, old fruit has yeast growing
on it. And as the yeast cells break down sugars in
the fruit, they make ethanol, a type of alcohol that gives those
baby flies a boozy meal. Ethanol isn’t good for developing baby anythings,
but fruit flies can tolerate some of it because they have an enzyme to break it down. Still, generally, female flies do prefer to
lay their eggs on fruit with low levels of ethanol, except when parasitoid wasps are
around. Kind of like with the caterpillars, tiny wasps
can lay their eggs in fruit fly maggots, and eventually, the wasp larvae
will devour them alive. But the wasps aren’t as tolerant of ethanol
as fruit flies. For them, it causes various organ defects,
and research published in 2012 showed that wasps were more than twice as likely to die if they parasitized flies that had been consuming ethanol. What’s especially cool is that another study,
published a year later, showed that female fruit flies decide whether or not to lay their eggs in boozy fruit based on the risk of parasitism. In the experiment, female flies that saw female
parasitoid wasps preferred to lay their eggs in high ethanol food sources. But flies who were shown male wasps, who don’t
lay eggs and so don’t pose a parasitism threat, preferred low-ethanol fruit. Like with the caterpillars, though, this doesn’t
necessarily mean the flies learned that ethanol was medicine. The researchers suggested that, instead, seeing
a female wasp might trigger changes in the fly’s brains that cause them to prefer it. Although these insect stories are great, the
whole idea of zoopharmacognosy really gained popularity based on work by primatologists. Over the years, they observed various monkeys and apes eating plants used by local humans to treat ailments, especially intestinal parasites. This led them to hypothesize that the animals
were also using plants as medicine, and their ideas trickled down into
pop culture from there. But the truth is, in a lot of these cases,
there just isn’t a ton of evidence, because these hypotheses are much harder to test in
primates compared to with insects. For example, it’s not really ethical, or
practical, to put a bunch of monkeys in lab, and then give some of them parasites and see what
they choose to eat. So scientists mostly have to rely on circumstantial evidence they gather by basically stalking primates in the wild. But those studies have been really interesting. One example was from a paper published in
2001, where researchers recorded an odd behavior in chimpanzees in Tanzania. First thing in the morning, on an empty stomach,
the chimps would fold up a leaf, often from an Aspilia plant, and then swallow it whole,
without chewing. Other researchers had seen similar things
before, but in this paper, the scientists took their work further. They recorded 14 instances of this behavior
and then followed the chimps closely to see, like, how everything came out. They were only able to observe pooping in
seven of the animals, but for those seven, they found that the leaves passed through
the chimps’ guts pretty much intact. More importantly, they noticed that there
were often adult nematode worms present in the poop, parasites that spend part of their
life cycle in the chimps’ intestinal walls. The researchers didn’t find evidence of
any nematode-killing chemical in the Aspilia leaves, though, like you might guess. Instead, they think the leaves may have more
of a mechanical action. They have rough, slightly bristly surfaces,
and the scientists think that allows them to physically scrape the worms off the chimps’
intestinal walls. Kind of like swallowing a scrub pad. As you can imagine, the leaves also irritate
the stomach, which makes it secret more gastric acid. Then, the acid passes through the intestine
as well and may further repel the worms. Of course, the sample size here is pretty
small, and the researchers couldn’t experimentally test whether the leaves actually dislodge any parasites. So before we say anything for sure, we’ve got to get some science way more up close and personal with those chimp intestines. All examples of zoopharmacognosy aren’t
about parasites, though. Some animals self-medicate for other reasons. For example, red colobus monkeys living on the island of Zanzibar may use charcoal to prevent upset tummies. Farmers in Zanzibar have planted two species
of non-native trees, mango and Indian almond, that have protein-rich, nutritious leaves
that also happen to be loaded with tannic acid. Tannic acid binds to proteins during digestion,
which makes food less nutritious and also causes symptoms like nausea and vomiting in
humans and, presumably, in monkeys. In high enough doses, it can also be toxic
to liver cells. So to eat the mango and almond leaves safely,
the colobus monkeys appear to take advantage of another resource that humans have inadvertently
provided, charcoal. Local farmers burn wood in outdoor kilns to
make charcoal for cooking fuel. And colobus monkeys visit these kilns when
they’re not in use to eat the bits of charcoal left behind. Charcoal doesn’t have any nutritional value,
but it is good at absorbing things. That’s why we use activated charcoal to
treat people who have ingested certain types of poison. In 1997, when researchers tested the samples
of charcoal the monkeys were eating, they found that they weren’t as good at absorbing
tannic acid as medical-grade activated charcoal, but they were surprisingly effective. That made them hypothesize that eating charcoal
allows the monkeys to safely eat the nutritious almond and mango leaves. This may even be a learned behavior, too. Colobus monkeys that don’t live near farms and don’t eat these leaves haven’t been observed eating charcoal. And when researchers left some out, the animals
had no interest in it. To get really convincing evidence that the
monkeys are using charcoal as medicine, though, you would have to do actual experiments, like
feeding the monkeys almond leaves without charcoal and seeing if they got sick. But that’s logistically pretty challenging,
and also just kind of mean. If you’ve tried doing the monkey bars on
the playground recently, you might have found that as you’ve gotten older you’re a little
less good at that and your arms got pretty sore. And you might have even later treated that
with a pain-killing rub like Icy Hot. If you did, you might not be alone. Based on some evidence, orangutans might do
something similar after a long day swinging through the trees. Starting back in 2003, scientists studying orangutans
in Borneo noticed some of the animals chewing up the leaves of the Dracaena plant, spitting them out, and massaging the spit-leaf mixture
on their arms and legs. The orangutans never swallow the Dracaena
leaves, and they don’t rub any other leaves on their body like this, so scientists got curious. They learned that local people used Dracaena to treat sore muscles, and after some chemical analyses, they found that there was good reason
for that: The plants contain chemicals called saponins, which can have anti-inflammatory properties. Specifically, they inhibit the production
of inflammatory cytokines, signaling chemicals that promote redness and swelling. Muscle soreness after hard exercise is caused
in part due to this inflammation. So it’s possible that the orangutans were using the chewed up Dracaena leaves as a pain-killing rub. What makes this more likely is that most of
the animals observed doing this were females who were hauling the extra weight of their
offspring around and might have had some extra sore arms. But so far, only ten orangutans have been
observed using Dracaena, and researchers can’t exactly ask them
how their arms feel. For all we know, the leaf-spit mixture just
makes their hair really soft and shiny. They’re instagram influencers. Finally, one example of zoopharmocognosy that
has gotten a lot of attention is the elephant and the red seringa tree. As the story goes, a researcher studying elephants
in Kenya observed one very pregnant elephant walk many kilometers out of its way to devour
this tree. They had never seen any of their elephants
eat this plant before, so it seemed odd that the pregnant one made such an effort to do it. Then, four days later, the elephant gave birth. When the researcher talked to local women
about this, they told her that sometimes they used a tea made from seringa leaves to induce uterine contractions and labor. So the researcher hypothesized that, maybe,
the elephant was using the plant the same way. But even though popular literature cites this
example a lot, it’s really not conclusive. For one, it’s not clear which chemical in
the seringa is responsible for inducing uterine contractions in humans. Or, if it has the same effect in elephants. Maybe that elephant would have given birth
in four days no matter what she ate. Generally speaking, we also don’t know how
often pregnant elephants eat this tree. At the moment there’s just this one recorded
observation and a cool hypothesis that needs more testing. All these examples go to show that zoopharmacognosy
is really a very cool field, and that, in some cases,
there is very strong evidence for it. But in other cases the jury is still out. There’s still a lot scientists need to learn,
and there are research methods they need to develop. But one way or another, this all raises interesting
questions about animal learning, and whether we can discover potential medicines for ourselves by watching how animals deal with their ailments. We just probably shouldn’t come to those
conclusions too fast. Which is true of anything. We have to apply appropriate methodology and
logic to any new discovery. And if you want to work out your analytical
thinking muscles, check out the Logic course on Brilliant.org. You’ll get to pretend you’re a 21st century
Sherlock Holmes when you learn ways to predict the outcome of a competition or unlock how to tell if a statement is true or false. And you’ll be learning multi-level thinking
skills while having fun and feeling accomplished. Head to Brilliant.org/SciShow to learn more,
and right now, the first 200 people to go to sign up
at that link from here will get 20% off of an
annual premium subscription to Brilliant. Have fun and know that you’re supporting
SciShow too! Thanks! [ ♪ Outro ]

Hello and welcome to Organic Edible Garden. As the moon is now in the last phase it’s a good time for garden maintenance. This week we’re going to look at slug and snail control and it’s at this time of year before the buds open up we want to hang our codling moth traps in the tree. One of the easiest and best ways of controlling slugs is going out at night-time with a torch. You can pick them off the plants as you see them, put them in a jar and dispose of them in the morning. Another really good way to control slugs and snails in your garden is with coffee grounds. The slugs and snails have issues crossing the coffee grounds and at the same time the coffee grounds are a good form of carbon for your garden. Just two things to remember about coffee grounds: 1. Don’t put them too thick because they can bake and they can repel water, and secondly, they can be quite acidic so a handful of lime over the top is also a good option. Another really way of controlling slugs and snails in your garden is with a yeast trap. You can also use beer but I think it’s a waste and this is a cheaper option. It’s a really simple recipe of mixing a teaspoon of yeast, a teaspoon of white sugar and some warm water. Give it a good stir until the yeast and sugar dissolve. The yeast and sugar have now reacted to the warm water and are bubbling nicely. We’re going to put the first recycled container with the mixture into the soil at ground level. We’re going to fill in around it so the slugs and snails can get easily into it. You can also use a saucer which is nice and shallow and push that in the ground and slugs and snails can walk into that as well. Both of these have the disadvantage of being diluted by the rain. So you can buy a purpose-built trap that fits beer or the yeast mixture, has a lid to stop the rain and animals drinking it and can still be place in the ground at the same level. We’re back-filling it and leaving a space so the slugs and snails can still go into the container. And another traditional way of catching slugs and snails and an organic way is with a large pot turned upside down. We stuff it full of newspapers which gives a place for the slugs and snails to hide. We then turn the pot upside down and give them a place where they can crawl under. During the day the slugs and snails will go into the pot to hide from the midday sun. At this time you can lift it up, find them and dispose of them. By using one or a variety of these methods you’ll gradually break the cycle and eventually rid your garden of slugs and snails. Before bud burst on your apple and pear trees it’s good to make some codling traps. These traps are good because they trap both the male and female moth, unlike the pheromone traps which only trap the male. They take a few simple ingredients and a plastic bottle. In this case we’ve got molasses, we’ve got some cloudy ammonia, some cider vinegar and a bit of dishwashing liquid. And then what we’re going to do with a pair of scissors, we’re going to cut two holes the size of a golf ball on either side just under the lid. The reason we do this is it’s big enough for the moths to fly in and go down to the mixture we’re making or get stuck and they’ll drown. We’re making a second one because with the size of the tree it’s probably best with two traps. Now we’re going to make the mixture. So this is the fifth cup of water. The next thing we’re going to add is some molasses. It’s thick and goopy so it’s not the easiest thing to pour. If there’s too much it’s not a problem either. Then a good cup of cider vinegar. A few drops of dishwashing liquid which makes things stick. And finally a little bit of ammonia, just to release the smell easier. Then you stir it up. We take the lids off the milk bottles and we fill them about quarter-full. And now the traps are ready to be hung in the tree. We use a soft twine rather than a hard twine like this. It does less damage to the branches. The next thing we do is tie it to the tree. It’s best to choose two strong branches and tie a piece of string from either side. This stops it rocking in the wind. You can take them down during the growing season to check the progress with the codling moths. And if they do evaporate, adding a bit more water or a bit more mixture is a good idea.

So, you know in Game of Thrones, there’s
this character—smells really bad, they call him “Reek”? Turns out, that could actually be caused by medical conditions that we know of, medical conditions that cause you to emit odors that go way beyond the typical stinky armpit. In some cases, you might reek of boiled cabbage,
or sweaty feet, or even rotting fish. These conditions are rare,
but their symptoms can be pungent, and sometimes also downright dangerous. Unusual body odors are often a sign of a bigger
problem—specifically, a defect in the way your body is breaking down, or metabolizing, your food. For example, there’s the condition known
as trimethylaminuria— also known as “fish odor syndrome”. Patients with this condition are said to smell
like decomposing fish, because their bodies don’t break down a compound called trimethylamine,
which emits the je ne sais quoi of fishiness. Now, everyone’s body produces trimethylamine—specifically, in the gut, where bacteria excrete it while helping us digest foods like eggs, liver, and fish. Normally, having all that trimethylamine
in your body is not a problem, because it’s converted into an odorless molecule,
thanks to a special enzyme in the liver, known as a flavin-containing monooxygenase. But people with fish odor syndrome can’t
metabolize the smelly compound, because they have mutations in the gene that produces that enzyme. Without enough of that working enzyme, the
trimethylamine builds up, and has nowhere to go but out with your bodily fluids—in
your sweat, urine, even on your breath. But people with the condition do have some options. They can change their diets so there are fewer
of the precursor chemicals that get broken down into trimethylamine. It’s one of the only times your doctor
will actually tell you not to eat your broccoli, or your brussels sprouts! Infusions of antibiotics can also help wipe out some of the bacteria that are making the trimethylamine. These rarely solve the problem entirely, but
the good news is that apart from the smell, there isn’t any major health problem associated
with fish odor syndrome. Which is not the case for a disorder that gives people the distinctive whiff of sweaty feet. This condition, known as isovaleric acidemia,
can cause brain damage, and even death, particularly in young children. Here, patients have a genetic mutation that
leads to a deficiency in an enzyme called isovaleric co-enzyme A dehydrogenase. This enzyme is important because it helps
break down the amino acid leucine. Without this enzyme, leucine can only be broken
down part-way. And the compound that’s left over from this
process, an acid called isovaleric acid, starts to build up. Isovaleric acid smells kind of like cheese,
and it’s the same chemical that makes your sweaty feet smell. The bacteria hiding out between
your toes produce this acid when they’re chomping away on leucine. But while isovaleric acid isn’t exactly
pleasant to smell outside your body, it can be downright damaging to the inside. It’s not exactly clear why, but a build-up
of isovaleric acid tends to have the most dramatic effects on the central nervous system. In large amounts, it’s toxic to neurons, which can result in developmental delays in many patients. And because this enzyme deficiency makes it
difficult to digest breast milk or formula, dangerous symptoms can start
appearing very soon after birth. In severe cases, infants just a few days old
will refuse to eat and begin to have seizures. There is, so far, no cure for isovaleric acidemia,
but some treatments— like avoiding foods rich in leucine, and taking supplements of other, non-threatening amino acids— can help keep patients safe. Finally, peculiar symptoms and even stranger
smells can result from another, similar disorder known as hypermethioninemia. In this case, the problem is having too much
of a different amino acid: methionine. Methionine is the rare amino acid that contains
sulfur, an element known for its pungent odor. And when methionine isn’t metabolized properly
in your body, it can result in large amounts of dimethylsulfide, which produces a smell
similar to boiled cabbage. Sometimes the condition comes about just because
you’ve eaten too much methionine, which is in protein-rich foods, like meat and cheese. But if the cause is genetic, it can be due
to mutations in one of several genes that are responsible for making the enzymes that help break down methionine. Without those enzymes, patients sometimes have that cabbagey smell in their sweat, breath, or urine. And strangely, not everyone with the disease
has symptoms—in fact, most people don’t. But in some, it can be serious. In severe cases, the inability to process
methionine can lead to neurological problems and muscle weakness, among other problems
in the nervous system. Again, treatment usually involves avoiding
foods that contain methionine, as well as taking supplements to make sure that the body
is getting what it needs. So, run-of-the-mill BO is nothing compared
to the very real medical conditions that can create unpleasant smells. There are a lot of things that can go wrong
when your body metabolizes food, and weird odors are just one way
to help spot and diagnose them. This episode of SciShow is brought to you
by 23andMe, a personal genetic analysis company created to help people understand their DNA. The name ‘23andMe’ comes from the fact that human DNA is organized into 23 pairs of chromosomes. Through genetic analysis, 23andMe users can
see which regions around the world their ancestors came from, and learn how their DNA influences
facial features, hair, sense of taste and smell, sleep quality and more. You can also connect with people who share
similar DNA; and also learn how your DNA may influence your health and wellness. I’ve been wanting to do this for so long,
and I haven’t, and I don’t know why. Oh, this is gonna be hard with the green screen. Woo, woo, where is it? They’re gonna tell me about me … from my spit. What? What’s the liquid in the funnel for? Oh, woah, did I break it? Okay, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. Alright. Now I just spit in it. By sending in my saliva, I’ll have the opportunity
to learn about my health, ancestry, and personal traits through my DNA. I’ll also learn about my genetics related to
muscle composition, lactose intolerance, and caffeine consumption. Once I mail in my kit, I’ll have the results
in a few weeks. To do the same—and to support SciShow
—pleasecheck out 23andMe.com/SciShow